Category: Performers

Jackie Cooper

John Cooper (1922-2011) was a rare child actor who managed to extend early success into a long and successful life and career. Cooper made his screen debut aged six, though he had been carried around as an extra before that, and appeared for a couple of years as one of Hal Roach’s ‘Little Rascals’.

Under contract to Roach, Cooper was loaned to Paramount to star in Skippy (1931), under the direction of his uncle, Norman Taurog. In the same year he supported Wallace Beery’s Oscar-winning turn in The Champ.

Cooper worked regularly throughout his teenage years, notably as the second male lead in Fritz Lang’s The Return of Frank James (1940), also finding time to have an affair with Joan Crawford. His films as an adult in the 1940s were not of great note, and he took time out to serve in the navy. By 1949 he had started working regularly in television. In 1954 he made his first foray into television direction, going on to work on a wide variety of comedy and drama series, and winning two Primetime Emmys. From 1959, he was also working as a producer.

Cooper continued to act, and is well-known for playing Perry White in the Christopher Reeves Superman pictures. He finally retired in 1989.

Jackie Cooper made appearances in two MGM musicals: as a child in Broadway to Hollywood, and as a teenager in Ziegfeld Girl, as Lana Turner’s brother and Judy Garland’s beau.

August 4, 2026
Frank Morgan

Francis Phillip Wuppermann (1890-1949) was the Wizard of Oz. It was his most famous role, the one that has gained him immortality. But it was not his only role: he made about a hundred films altogether, including thirteen other MGM musicals.

A graduate of Cornell University (he studied business administration), Morgan made his start in acting in the theatre, in a Broadway production of Mr Wu in 1914. His screen debut came two years later, a supporting role in a Vitagraph picture. He was a journeyman player in both media until the late 1920s, when he appeared on stage in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1927). Three years later he created the title role in the comedy Topaze.

In the cinema, a highlight was co-starring as Bunny in John Barrymore’s Raffles, the Amateur Cracksman (1917). He was always based in New York, and apparently told his friend Ralph Bellamy he was selling out by going to Hollywood. Six months later, Morgan was there himself and, after returning East for two Broadway productions, became a fixture in the film capital. He was under contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer for the rest of his life, though he was loaned out in 1933 for Hallelujah, I’m a Bum.

Morgan had a few leading roles, for example in The Affairs of Cellini (1934), which earned him an Oscar nomination. More often, he worked as a character actor, always bringing added value to whatever picture he was in. Particular highlight was Lubitsch’s The Shop Around the Corner (1940), as the tragi-comic Mr Matuschek, and his role in the anti-Nazi The Mortal Storm (1940).

The musicals in which Morgan appeared, beside The Wizard of Oz, were Broadway to Hollywood (playing the lead), The Cat and the Fiddle, Naughty Marietta, The Great Ziegfeld, Rosalie, Sweethearts, Broadway Serenade, Balalaika, Broadway Melody of 1940, Hullabaloo (another lead), Thousands Cheer, Yolanda and the Thief and Summer Holiday. This means he worked with Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy, Fred Astaire, Eleanor Powell, Judy Garland, Gene Kelly, Mickey Rooney and Kathryn Grayson: most of the musical performers whose stars glittered in the MGM firmament.

Frank Morgan, despite his usually cheery persona on and off screen, had a serious problem with alcohol, believed to have been triggered by the murder of the brother with whom he was closest. He was a functioning alcoholic, but the impact on his general health was almost certainly a contributing factor to his death from heart failure at the age of 59, just after he had started shooting Annie Get Your Gun.

August 3, 2026
Alice Brady

Mary Rose Brady (1892-1939) will have found it relatively easy to break into the New York film industry, given that her first picture, As Ye Sow (1914) was made by William A Brady Productions, her father’s company. She had previously acted on stage, including in a Broadway production with which her father was associated. She continued to work in the theatre during her film career, including a leading role in the 1931 premiere of Eugene O’Neill’s Mourning Becomes Electra.

Brady acted in films until 1923, then concentrated on the stage until travelling to Hollywood in 1933. After one supporting role at MGM, she starred in two musicals, playing very different kinds of stage mother: Broadway to Hollywood and Stage Mother.

Alice Brady’s most beloved role is probably as Carole Lombard’s batty mother in My Man Godfrey (1936), which earned her a nomination for the Best Supporting Actress Oscar. She won in the category the following year, for her part in In Old Chicago (1938), this time as Tyrone Power’s mother, responsible for starting the cataclysmic fire.

Brady’s final role was as yet another mother, the noble Abigail Clay in John Ford’s Young Mr Lincoln (1939)a

August 3, 2026

Broadway to Hollywood

The Cast

Alice Brady	Lulu Hackett
Frank Morgan	Ted Hackett
Jackie Cooper	Ted Hackett Jr. as a Child
Russell Hardie	Ted Hackett Jr.
Madge Evans	Anne Ainsley
Mickey Rooney	Ted Hackett III as a Child
Eddie Quillan	Ted Hackett III
Jimmy Durante	Jimmy
Fay Templeton	Herself Edited from The March of Time (1930)
May Robson	Veteran Actress
Albertina Rasch Dancers	Themselves Edited from The March of Time (1930)
Tad Alexander	Cousin David (uncredited)
Edward Brophy	Joe Mannion (uncredited)
Ruth Channing	Wanda (uncredited)
William Collier Sr.	Himself in archive footage (uncredited)
Marie Dressler	Herself in archive footage (uncredited)
Louis Mann	Himself in archive footage (uncredited)
Claire Du Brey	Aunt Clara (uncredited)
Nelson Eddy	John Sylvester (uncredited)
Sidney Bracey	Man in Balcony (uncredited)
Barney Fagan	Edited from The March of Time (uncredited)
Josephine Sabel	Edited from The March of Time (uncredited)
DeWolf Hopper	Edited from The March of Time (uncredited)
Joe Weber	Edited from The March of Time (uncredited)
Lew Fields	Edited from The March of Time (uncredited)
Robert Greig	Diamond Jim Brady (uncredited)
Tenen Holtz	Booking Agent (uncredited)
Curly Howard	Fritz the Clown (uncredited)
Moe Howard	Otto the Clown (uncredited)
Frank Jenks	Call Boy (uncredited)
Jean Howard	Grace (uncredited)
Muriel Evans	1st flirty blonde chorus girl (uncredited)
Isabelle Keith	2nd flirty blonde chorus girl (uncredited)
Miriam Marlin	Chorus girl (uncredited)
Edwin Maxwell	Rockwell (uncredited)
Alexander Pollard	Butler (uncredited)
Helen Parrish	Cousin (uncredited)
Edward Peil Sr	Stage Manager (uncredited)
Una Merkel	Flirt in audience (uncredited)
Charles Rice	Himself (uncredited)
Fred Cady	Himself (uncredited)
Tom Nawn and Company	Performers (uncredited)
Bobby Somers	Ted Hackett III as a Baby (uncredited)
Forrest Taylor	Conway (uncredited)
Sherry Hall	Assistant on film set (uncredited)
Leo White	Joe Weber (uncredited)
Billy Sullivan	Undetermined Role (uncredited)
Eddie Foster	Undetermined Role (uncredited)

August 2, 2026

Charley Rogers

Charles Rogers (1887-1956) is generally known as Charley and, like his namesake Charlie Chaplin and his close friend Stan Laurel, he started out working in British music halls, before emigrating to the United States in 1912.

In the same year, Rogers played the Artful Dodger in Oliver Twist, one of the earliest multi-reel features, produced by a New York studio. He continued to work in the East Coast film industry for several years, before finally making his way to Hollywood.

In 1927, Rogers appeared uncredited in Love ‘em and Feed ‘em, and stayed at the Hal Roach Studios for many years, quickly moving into writing and directing.

Rogers has been described as, in creative terms, second only to Stan Laurel on the Roach lot, and he worked on a number of Laurel and Hardy’s best shorts and features. These included, as a gag writer, We Faw Down, Two Tars (both 1928), Hog Wild and Laughing Gravy (both 1930). Rogers contributed the original stories and screenplays for Block-Heads (1938), A Chump at Oxford and Saps at Sea (both 1940).

Rogers directed or co-directed, and also contributed to the writing of, three of Laurel and Hardy’s operettas: The Devil’s Brother, Babes in Toyland (in which he also played Simple Simon) and The Bohemian Girl. He also wrote gags for Swiss Miss.

Away from Laurel and Hardy, Rogers played Josef Goebbels in the studio’s bizarre wartime semi-feature That Nazty Nuisance (1943). One of his last jobs was an uncredited appearance in Chaplin’s Limelight (1952).

July 31, 2026
Brooks Benedict

Following military service in the First World War, Harold J Mann (1896-1968) worked in various jobs in Hollywood before making his acting debut in William Wellman’s Cupid’s Fireman (1923).He chose a name that matched his lounge lizard appearance.

Benedict went on to appear in over 350 films. Initially, he had featured roles, such as the College Cad in Harold Lloyd’s The Freshman (1925), but by the sound era he was mostly playing uncredited bit parts.

Benedict was credited in What Price Hollywood? (1932), and also appeared in Sons of the Desert (1933), The Thin Man (1934), In Old Chicago (1938), Mr Smith Goes to Washington (1939), The Letter (1940), Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942), Now, Voyager (1942), Phantom Lady (1944), The Killers (1946), It’s a Wonderful Life (1946), Out of the Past (1947) and Strangers on a Train (1951).

Brooks Benedict acted in five Metro musicals, starting with The Devil’s Brother. He went on to appear in Sweethearts, Lady Be Good, Du Barry was a Lady and Holiday in Mexico.

July 29, 2026
Frank Terry

Frank Ernest Edwards (1871-1948) had a long career touring the world as a stage actor before becoming a jack-of-all-trades in Hollywood.

From 1917, Terry worked at the Hal Roach Studios as a gag writer, story contributor, scenarist, assistant director, director and actor. He worked regularly, and in many of these capacities, with Laurel and Hardy, appearing as Hives the butler in Me and My Pal (1933). In the same year he had a bit part in The Devil’s Brother.

Outside the Roach studio, Terry played one of the hunters who find the Monster in the blind man’s cottage in The Bride of Frankenstein (1935).

IMDb claims he played a bailiff in Old Mother Riley in Paris (1938), though it is unclear why he would have been in England.

Frank Terry’s most notorious contribution to film history is as the man who handed Harold Lloyd the stage bomb that took off several of his fingers. Terry was also injured in the incident.

Frank Terry retired from show business and became a Christian missionary.

July 29, 2026
George Miller

The IMDb entry for George Miller (1903-??) raises more questions than it answers.

It gives him seven credits, with a 1930 debut in a ‘B’ western’. It then shows four appearances with Laurel and Hardy, including in the musical The Devil’s Brother.

It then claims he played the Reeve in the historical sequence at the beginning of Powell and Pressburger’s A Canterbury Tale (1944), suggesting a relocation to the UK.

Finally, IMDb says he played Kasim Baba in a 1953 BBC production, Chu Chin Chow – On Ice, a version of the 1916 musical on an ice rink.

Make of that what you will.

July 28, 2026
Jack Hill

Lawrence Young Hill (1887-1963) made his uncredited screen debut in Shiver and Shake (1922), the first of many appearances for the Hal Roach Studios, where he also worked as an occasional stunt performer.

Hill was a regular in Laurel and Hardy pictures right from the beginning, working as an extra in their first screen pairing, Putting Pants on Philip (1927). In Two Tars (1928) he knocked Stan over with a mattress, while in Below Zero (1930) he helped throw the pair out of the restaurant. In Bonnie Scotland (1935), Hill had three different roles.

Inevitably, Jack Hill made appearances in three of MGM’s Laurel and Hardy musicals: The Devil’s Brother, The Bohemian Girl and Swiss Miss.

July 28, 2026
Arthur Stone

Arthur Taylor Goetze (1883-1940) was only making films for about twelve years, but still managed to notch up around 80 appearances. Prior to that, he had worked in vaudeville and, most recently, as a makeup artist. He was married to Dorothy Westmore, from the famous Hollywood makeup dynasty.

Working for Hal Roach, Stone had a passing similarity to Harry Langdon, and played a similarly child-like character. He then moved into playing character roles in First National features. By the end of the silent era, he was playing co-starring roles alongside actors such as Coleen Moore and Jean Hersholt.

The coming of sound saw Stone move into smaller character roles, often in westerns, until he was hired by Mack Sennett to make a series of comedy shorts. In his final years, he moved between down-the-bill character roles, for example in Charlie Chan in Egypt (1935) and uncredited bits. He can be seen as one of the lynch mob in Fritz Lang’s Fury (1936), providing a little comic relief.

Stone appeared without credit in one MGM/Hal Roach musical, The Devil’s Brother.

July 28, 2026